


a thousand kites with a thousand lights

by Lee_Mix



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 00:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5227661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lee_Mix/pseuds/Lee_Mix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was called the Little Ladybug of Parisian Nights by many, spending her time flickering her tiny wings and spreading her lights into the skies of her city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a thousand kites with a thousand lights

Hers is a name whispered in a chain of events in every school. 

Of course, they do not know her true name, the one she was born with–and that was just it, nobody did know. She stalked into shadows of the night like a cat into an alley, but there was no mistaking that she was not a phantom of a teenager’s wistful attempt to get more excitement in their lives. She was called the Little Ladybug of Parisian Nights, flickering her tiny wings and spreading her lights into the skies of her city.

Every night, dead on nine, they would rise up. Golden hues matched only by the great tower, on all stretches of the city. Hitchhikers on the tails of hundreds of kites, golden dots clinging for dear life in the midnight air, they would flit around and flail, creating a free spectacle of artificial wonder. The authorities did little about it–it drew in tourism, and thus money, so they remained to dance. 

Adrien leaned against the rooftop doorway, observing the red-clad figure mending the kite of a ladybug, before glancing down at the paper in his hand. He was definitely in the right spot. 

There were the rumours surrounding her, obviously. About how she was a castaway from a rich family, and had somehow leaked their expenses and was wasting it away in the most creative way possible. Others argued that she was a teenager mourning the loss of a baby her strict father had forced her to terminate, and she used the lights to guide her baby to heaven. A riches to rags story gone awry, teenage rebellion, art student making liberal points, a sign that Christ was walking amongst technology… all the rumours surrounding her could have made tragic novels in their own right.

But she was just a kid. A skinny, short kid who was fixing a kite, sticking her tongue out and frowning as she looped the knot again. Her legs were too thin and her shoulders too broad, and she had slight burns on her hands poorly taped up with splitting bandages, but the Ladybug that everyone had spoken about  _existed._ His breath almost hitched in his throat as she cast a look his way.

Immediately, she dropped her kite and took a step back. “Wh-who is there?” The Ladybug squirmed in her stance, “c-come out right now!”

Her demands were almost comical, but Adrien complied and came out with his hands up in a pretense surrender. “Sorry for not coming out, but I didn’t plan on staying hidden for too much longer.” 

She frowned, and put a hand on her hip. “Who are you?”

“A curious observer.” 

She snorted. “Very likely. I don’t stay in the same place very often, and you’d have a rainbow’s pot of gold chance in tracking me down.” She leaned forward and glared. “Who  _are_ you, and how did you find me?”

Adrien stuffed his hands in his pockets, and leaned against the metal fencing, staring up at the overcast black sky. “A fan, I guess. One who comes on behalf of someone who was  _very_ excited to know you exist. You might know her, she runs a blog on your lights.”

The girl seemed to think hard, taking slow steps so she was in front of her kite and his body. “A…lya? Is that her?”

“Got it. She won’t reveal anything, I promise. Despite being an upcoming journalist, she’s pretty trustworthy in that field, believe it or not.” He gestured toward the kite with a nod. “Launching that one tonight, too?”

“In a few minutes, yeah. Why,” she folded her arms, “are you here to tell me I can’t?”

“Au contraire, my Lady.” He saw the small blush spread across her face. “I am here for the novelty that is watching your work first hand.”

“Novelty?”

“Everyone has to have a temporary obsession. You with your kites, and me with watching them. Comes as expected with being a kid, really.”

Her arms slowly came down from her sides, and she gazed at him with a blank expression. No emotion at  _all,_ save for complete passivity. “They aren’t temporary. Not to me.”

A laugh came from his throat. “You’re joking, right? Are you seriously telling me that you’re planning on doing this forever?”

“No. I won’t live forever, nobody does.” Her voice was monotone, but there was truth in her words. A truth he hadn’t heard since… “But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop when I get bored. This won’t be temporary for me.”

“You’re telling me you’re going to be  _Ladybug_ for the rest of your life?”

“If it makes people happy, yeah.”

“You can’t make  _everyone_ happy with Ladybug  _forever,_ kid.”

“It’s Marinette.”

“Whatever. What I’m saying is, these kites have been here for almost two years. I’m surprised you haven’t thrown in the towel already. Don’t you actually want to do something with your life other than be a mask for people to project their fantasies onto? This is pretty, but useless in the long run. Besides, you’ve heard the stories about you, right?”

She shrugged off his questions with an irritating sense of nonchalance. “Of course I have. Can’t say some of them haven’t been ridiculous. Even the  _name_ Ladybug is stupid, but it makes people happy, and that makes me want to carry on. What’s useless about making people happy?”

He clenched his fist. “What do you hope to  _gain_ from all this?” Adrien hissed at her, but she was unfazed. "The stars are already there! There's no need to make even more lights. You’re wasting all of your time attaching lights to the end of kites and launching them up in the skies, and hope your fake stars will somehow make the world better. Why do you even bother?”

_Stop with all this senseless frivolousness, Adrien. You must put your time into doing something productive. You don’t want to make me disappointed, do you? Think about what your mother would say if she was here._

A figure hunched by the doorway. Body position so that the light obscured the face. Perhaps his own personal bias  _was_ bleeding into his own views of Marinette. Or was she Ladybug? Marinette or Ladybug or whatever made her happy. And watching her hang her head and bite her lip, seeing those tears stream down her cheeks as reality slapped her with an ice-cold hand soaked him in a hot fuel of regret. But he wouldn’t take back those words. He couldn’t.

_Just a curious observer, hm? Don’t make me laugh, Adrien. You’re just as pathetic as her, maybe even more so. At least she’s trying to hold her personal reasons back from all of this._

“You’ve never been to a land with no stars, have you?”

His head snapped up. “What?”

Marinette’s gaze had turned from the floor to the sky. “My mother and me… we lived in China before I came here. Don’t believe everything you hear, I wouldn’t miss my homeland so much if it had nothing good to offer. Your news always seems to paint it with the worst pictures.” A small smile came to her lips. “But there were never any stars. The air was so  _thick_ with pollution, sometimes we had to wear masks. They say England is the land of the grey, but they should call China that. There were a lot of older couples–men and women, who would put lights on these kites and throw them up in the air to celebrate their love. When you’re small, you don’t pay attention to that, but looking back… it’s a beautiful way to try and make something positive, even if it’s meaningless.”

The wind began to pick up, caressing through her hair, and he heard a small countdown on her digital watch begin.

“Maybe what I’m doing  _is_ pointless to you, but I don’t care about what anyone bad thinks of me. You know what? To so many people, what I do makes their days a little brighter.” She gripped the kite a little tighter. As if hugging it close to her beating heart. “Even if I can’t go home now, even if I live in France for the rest of my life, I want to spread some of my homeland’s joy to all of these people. Ladybugs are meant to bring good luck, and where I come from, they’re said to bring families together if you see one.” 

A bright grin on her face was all he could see as she turned back to him. “Being called Ladybug? It means the whole  _city_ can become a family if they see my lights.”

The ticking of her watch filled the atmosphere, balanced only by the wind buffering against his ear canal. In the distance, more golden kites began to rise, one-by-one. Perhaps she had a way of setting them off, but another conclusion came to his mind–she wasn’t  _alone._ More people believed in her, in what she stood for, and this simple act of pointless rebellion had made others stare in wonder, speculate, and brought an entire city to its knees to look up and appreciate another’s work. A _child's_ work. 

A child... like him. 

“…How many kites do you have with you?”

She blinked at him. “Two, but the other one is a little broken. It’ll still fly, but I wasn’t planning on using it. Why?”

“What is it?”

“A black cat. The lights are in it’s eyes.” The thought he had seemed to dawn on her. “Of course, I’ll need to launch both, but I’ve only got two hands, and I won’t let anyone else touch my ladybug. Are you still a curious observer?”

“I think I’ll be anything tonight with what I just heard.”

* * *

People spoke about it for months afterward. About that one night, in the middle of Autumn, when an entire city stopped in its entirety as a thousand kites with a million lights stole the stage from the stars and danced in the city. Kites ranging from animals to patchwork attempts at patterns, held in the hands of the old and the young and everything in-between. 

But the  _centre_ of the city was what had them all gossiping. The center of that stage of lights. Of a black cat with golden eyes and a ladybug with white wings, intertwining with tails of light, catching the waves of night air and showing the city that beauty came from perfection and shattered remains alike.

Meanwhile, two figures sat side-by-side in a small cafe, tucked away on a cobblestone street, smiling to themselves in silence as the news chattered away about “Ladybug” and her new companion, “Chat Noir.”

“The news sure does exaggerate, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe. But let them keep guessing. Makes things more exciting, don’t you think?”

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Let me start by saying the concept of attaching lights to kites and putting them in the skies was not an original idea by myself–it comes from the wonderful online comic story Knites by Yuumemi over on Deviantart, and I highly recommend anyone to read it. However, watching Ladybug as of late gave me an idea of what a “hero” means to people. Can it be people who prance around in costumes, defeating bad guys to defend our idea of normality? Or is it those who challenge the normal to liberate us into another perspective? Or somewhere in between–those who protect, but don’t protect us in the traditional sense. They protect what has always been, and envision a freer future. Marinette is a girl that is confident and always wishing to help others, and as Ladybug, she can do that. I just wanted to offer a story where she saves people in another way, and Adrien, like in the show, yearns to know her identity by the liberty she offers him. A few notes, however–this does reference the Chinese epidemic of pollution and infertility resulting from said pollution, and I didn’t want to ignore Marinette’s Chinese heritage by just referencing that. She is more than the negative side of her culture on her mother’s side. There is a positive side to her culture, as there is in all cultures. This is a rather long story and one I have been working on for a little while, non-stop.


End file.
